Page 44 of The Devil to Pay

“Are you very wicked, then?” she asked, thinking to tease him but becoming increasingly alarmed by the dark expression on his face.

He didn’t reply, which was answer enough, and Selina remembered she had painted him as a womaniser from the start. So, she ought not be surprised, or disappointed.

He led her back inside, pushing her through one door and coming around the long way to meet her back inside the ballroom. A practised move to avert suspicion, and one she suspected he was well accustomed to.

“I’ll come to the house tonight,” he said once they were standing together again. “Then we can talk properly. I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”

She nodded, looking up at him with foreboding in her heart.

“Don’t look like that,” he said, and she saw anxiety in his eyes. “Please, Davenport. I know I must appear to be something of a loose screw, and I know you’ll not think much better of me when you discover who I am, but—”

“Selina!”

Selina jolted in surprise at the familiar bellow and turned automatically.

“Hubert!” she exclaimed in shock, stunned to see her older brother.

“Well, promised I’d be here to escort Abigail, didn’t I, sis?” he said genially.

“You did.” Selina offered him a smile, forbearing to remark that he was supposed to have escorted them to the event, not turned up halfway through it. Hubert, however, was beaming at her as if he expected to be congratulated on being such a splendid brother, so she added a hasty, “Thank you.”

Hubert was a man of many and mercurial moods, but sulking, she could not abide.

“Looking in prime twig tonight, Lina, old girl, if I might say so. You’ll never be a beauty, far too tall and mannish for that, but all the same. You’ve put on a good show. I feel quite proud of you.”

“How very gratifying,” she said icily, though the words went straight over Hubert’s head as always.

Mark, however… Selina’s breath caught at the murderous glint in his eyes. He was glaring at Hubert in a manner that boded ill for her brother’s health.

“You’ve not introduced me, Miss Davenport,” he said, and the icy manner, the hauteur with which he spoke, gave her a sudden chill as she wondered again who this man was.

Hubert looked at him then, giving Mark his attention for the first time and she was struck by the sudden change in his expression, and the almost worshipful look in her sibling’s eyes.

“Good God,” Hubert said, sounding breathless with excitement. “It… It is you? By Jove, I can hardly believe my eyes. Here, in Monmouth! Oh, but do excuse me, running off at the mouth, but it takes a fellow by surprise to come home and find Blackstone in such a deadly backwater as this!”

Mark… or she supposed she must now think of him as Blackstone, was rigid with suppressed emotion, not that Hubert noticed.

“I say, I must tell you, I so admire that nifty way you have with a cravat. I don’t suppose you’d consider showing me while you’re staying here, though why in God’s name you would want to, unless….” Hubert slapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, but I’m a slowtop. You’re here visiting Ashburton, no doubt. Thick as thieves, you two, I know, which reminds me. Can’t you have a word with that Hunt fellow? Try as I might, I cannot persuade him to let me join the Sons of Hades.”

“Mr Hunt makes his own decision,” Mark replied coldly. “I have not the slightest influence over him.”

Selina stiffened. The name of Blackstone had rung a faint bell, but she had never troubled herself overmuch with the names of all those in the upper echelons of society, safe in the knowledge that she would have nothing to do with them. The Sons of Hades, however, was a title she was well aware belonged to a notorious and exclusive club that Hubert was wild to join. The rules for entry were vague, but you had to be obscenely rich and run with a fast set of society known for their hard drinking and wild behaviour. There were a handful of members, most of whom who were notorious, Ashburton had certainly been one often written up in the scandal sheets though he’d been absent for the past year or more. The other….

“Oh, pity that,” Hubert said with a sigh. “Still, just you wait until I tell my friends I came home and discovered the Marquess of Blackstone at the local assembly. They won’t credit it.”

Hubert never had mastered the art of speaking at a level that was anything less than a roar, and so his words dropped like a stone into the still waters of the assembly and the ripples spread quickly out. Murmurs of interest and whispers and shocked gasps and feminine giggles merged until the sound was a loud buzz in Selina’s ears. The Marquess of Blackstone. Son and heir to the Duke of Bedwin. Notorious libertine and one of the founding members of that despicable club of profligates and ne’er-do-wells.

“Hubert,” Selina said, relieved to discover her voice was fairly steady. “I’d like to go home now, please.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lina, I’ve just got here,” Hubert protested.

“Now, Hubert,” Selina repeated, in the obey or die voice even Hubert would not willingly ignore. “I am feeling rather unwell.”

“Dash it all, though I must say, you’ve gone an awfully funny colour. Not going to cast up your accounts, are you?”

“Certainly, and over those ridiculous new boots you’re wearing if you do not take me home at once.”

Hubert paled and leapt into action at this dreadful threat. “I’ll fetch the carriage around,” he said, and hurried away.